The Stocking is stitching up a lot quicker than I expected. Actually, a whole lot quicker than I expected! With me being a founding member of the S…L…O…W club, it’s a pleasant change to see a project come to life so quick.

The pink swirl is supposed to be stitched in GAST Old Blue Paint, but seeing as I want to stitch a matching stocking for the Good Husband, I decided to change the colour on mine to GAST Berry Cobbler and use the blue for his.

In my previous post I mentioned what a nice look the threads give the project… – I can only repeat what I said earlier. If you ever want to stitch this, I can honestly advise you to use the suggested thread if you can get them.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend.

Yesterday evening the Good Husband suggested going to Passau today to have a look around.  It’s quite a pretty city and they have loads of interesting shops too! What makes Passau ’special’ is that three rivers meet there: the Danube, the Inn and the Ilz. As you can imagine, there are lots of riverboats and lots of tourists! 

Like I said, there were a lot of riverboats but this one was an eyecatcher! It’s called ‘Kristallschiff’ (Crystal Ship) and has a huge arch made of Swarovski crystals on every side.

Work on the Bent Creek Snowman Stocking is coming along nicely. The overdyed thread gives it an aged and worn look that I really like.  If you look closely you can see the variation in colour.

Tomorrow promises to be a quiet day so hopefully I can get a good couple of hours worth of stitching done. 

Thanks so much for the lovely comments on the pincushions!

In my other post I was so eager to share the pics of my pincushions that I completely forgot to show my finished House Mouse piece. I left out the backstitched ‘Sweet Dreams’ so if you want to split hair, it’s not done. The frame with the little paw prints on came with the kit so the pic gives you a fair idea of what it will look like framed. 

Slowly but surely I’m catching up in the SAL with my friend Karen in the UK – this is the second (and last) small PS design called ‘My Thread is Cut’. 

The next design in the SAL is Bent Creek’s Snowman Stocking. I’ve had this chart for at least two years and have been threatening to stitch the stocking every Christmas. The SAL is the perfect opportunity to get this done at last. When I got the threads together I realised that instead of Weeks Dye Works ‘Mulberry’ I bought GAST ‘Mulberry’. (I did order the Mulberry that I’m missing.) The DMC is for a couple of stitches in each colour that I just didn’t see the point in buying GAST for.

Well, I had a roaring time making pincushions over the weekend. Allow me to introduce the little beauties to you. From left to right: Strawberry Pincushion, a little pumpkin pincushion and last but definately not least, the Pin Blossom Pincushion. I got the instructions for the little pumpkin from Mary Kathryn, but you can also find instructions here.  Both the Strawberry and Pin Blossom turned out really well, but I’m afraid I didn’t use enough stuffing in the pumpkin so it’s a bit flat.

While assembling the little strawberry, I decided to make it into a scissor fob because I’m always losing my needles. I’m so proud of how the Pin Blossom turned out as I had a really difficult time a) figuring out the instructions and b) assembling the pieces. But then again, I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed! Here’s a close-up of the Pin Blossom. 

This afternoon I baked some Peanut Butter Shortbread cookies and since the Good Husband walked in they’ve been disappearing at an alarming rate. Good thing I took a pic before he came home! Whenever I bake cookies I have to put them somewhere where he can see them as soon as he walks into the kitchen or he tells me that I *hide* the cookies!

Yesterday I got a pleasant surprise in the mail – gorgeous pet themed scrapbook goodies I ordered and then promptly forgot about.  I’m pretty sure that when you start getting surprise packages from yourself it can’t be a good sign…  

I want to make a small  scrapbook for our little hamster Bella and a big one for my dog Samson. Both went over the Rainbow Bridge – Samson the end of last year and Bella earlier this year. Okay, it’s not as if I don’t have pet themed papers and embellishments but these really caught my eye and I couldn’t resist buying a few sheets each of the papers and the matching embellishments. The pink and blue papers with matching ribbon and brads are from BoBunny Press’ Posh Pet series, the pink/black ribbons from Doodlebug and the other papers from Karen Foster Designs. 

Even though stitching was slow going over the past three days the House Mouse is really coming along nicely and I’m hoping to finish it over the weekend if time allows.  There’s a lot of backstitching to be done and even though I hate backstitching with a passion, it does make a design ‘pop’ so it’s well worth the irritation!

This weekend I want to do a bit of sewing and on top of finishing some things off, want to  make myself a decent pincushion. I started off with having no clear idea how to make one to having a stack of instructions and patterns. It’s a disgrace that I don’t own a proper pincushion, so if all goes well I can brag with a brand new pincushion (or three) in my next post!

 Wishing everyone a great weekend!